Incapable
by Faulty Paragon
Summary: AU. Momiji had everything he had ever needed - Tohru, and his passion for the violin. He didn't need his family, acceptance - nothing else, if not for the euphoria felt with her warmth and his music. Unfortunately, sometimes, that just isn't enough. Momiji learns this the hard way - disease is a difficult enemy, even harder to fight without a name.


A/N: Another old fic that I changed up for these guys. AU - Tohru and Momiji are the same age, so she never met Yuki and Kyo, only Momiji, so the whole Zodiac issue never went beyond the Rabbit and his worries. I've always felt so bad for Momiji - he was the only one who never found someone to love.

* * *

**_"When I die, don't come near my body, because my hand may not be able to wipe your tears anymore."_**

**Incapable**

He had been nothing but a teen when the first pains had come. They had stolen out of the darkness like shadows in the light, hiding in the remnants of his laughter and forcing him to breathe heavily and double over in pain.

Momiji had ignored them, just as anyone struggling upon the cusp of adulthood would. There was simply too much to think about – school, university, parents, love, his _future _(for in a few years, he was going to be a legal adult, and it would be a complete and utter lie to say that he was prepared in any way, shape or form) – and to throw another thing onto the list would require far too much effort to carry through.

It hadn't helped that his father was suddenly telling him to stop violin, to give up the freedom of movement and body that allowed his soul to soar through to the heavens, releasing him of the earthly bonds he felt eternally constricted by. "It's for Momo," the man had insisted, but that did nothing to ease to pain of his new task.

If his little sister wanted to play violin, why couldn't he teach her?

It was through violin that he had met her, the quiet girl who always knew the right thing to say. She mirrored him, he thought – amongst the loud, rambunctious others which made up the vast majority of the student body, she was like him in the realm of normality. The pair was quiet, fitting into the background like details on the wallpaper one need not spare a second glance for. Yet, just as her movements flowed into his like water in a river, like air in the breeze, her simplistic words were enough to compel him forwards even in the darkest of times. No matter how hard he fell down after his father's insistence, she would always pick the pieces up instantly with only a few words and a smile.

And when she found out about his illness-magic-_curse _she had giggled, smiled, and held him close, unlike anyone else ever had. She loved bunnies, she cried, and that was that.

Momiji fell in love for the first time with Honda Tohru. And, somewhere along the way, she began to feel the same way about him.

After meeting her in his second year of middle school, he spent as much time at the high school practice rooms as he possibly could. His father's stinging words hurt, and although they were always said with such civility that one could mistake them as forming a comment about the weather (his father always had been one for tight-lipped smiles hiding venomous words – the son had simply never realized that trait until adolescence), Momiji didn't want any part of it anymore. It was especially so after finding that following each controlled 'discussion', the headaches became almost unbearable.

It wasn't that Momiji hated the idea of sitting behind a desk, crunching numbers and handling accounts like his father wanted him to do – while he had never been an avid student and learner, he had always settled himself comfortably in the higher end of the spectrum, and the thought of being an accountant or businessman didn't frighten him.

However, the bonds involved with those forms of employment – the restrictions, the rules, the suit and tie, the mundane cycle his life threatened to become by following that path – made him shudder and cringe. Despite living the life of the stereotypical student while growing up, he wanted freedom, fluidity. After all of those years being suffocated by the Sohmas, after living out a lie ('no ma'am, I'm waiting for my father, yes he works here, sorry for disturbing you, _yes my mother is proud of me __**not'**__) _he wanted to make his own decisions, to break from the cage of the curse.

Or, maybe it was even due to some sort of rebellious instinct that had remained latent in his earlier years of puberty, he didn't know. Unlikely, but there nonetheless. Either way, Momiji didn't want the life that was laid out for him.

Every once in a while, when a particularly strong headache finally went away, and he'd be left lying on the floor of the rehearsal studio with sweat pouring down his face and chest heaving for air, violin barely held off the ground in clammy hands, he'd just smile. With his fingers intertwined with hers, he felt complete. Maybe he'd find a way out by performing with the school's music department, he would murmur, and she'd laugh right back with that gentle, knowing laugh of hers over the breathlessness of music.

Because that was what defined the violin. It was magic that took his breath away, and he never wanted it to stop.

So, whenever anything was mentioned about school or future plans or anything else involving his father's wishes (or, as he referred to them, his own personal nightmares) he would return to that grungy studio and call her so that they could spend time with nothing but music and her smiles and his flying fingertips across steel strings and the shortness of breath that led to what could only be called a mental orgasm, releasing them from the stress of everyday life as the climax of each piece ended.

But the pain was persistent, and it soon manifested itself in other ways. It made that very shortness of breath he had once found mystical and twisted it to conform to the pain the headaches brought, and suddenly, the pain escalated into other things he couldn't understand.

No, as the final exams of his high school career approached, looming over him darkly like a thunderstorm brewing upon the horizon, it started becoming worse. The headaches turned into nausea, the shortness of breath turned into faintness, and soon, Momiji no longer had the energy to play the violin. Every stroke of his bow was sluggish, every note strained and exhausted. His grades dropped considerably, and no longer did he even have universities in his reach – no, he was hanging from a ledge on the wall of a cliff with nothing but darkness in his future if he fell any further.

The fighting became worse in his sham of a household, so bad that eventually dishes were broken and tears were shed and shame passed on and on as if blame was a ball they simply played catch with. However, in this game, there was no laughter or lightheartedness. There was only contempt and disgust and misery, and without violin, Momiji was becoming completely and utterly _sick _of it.

If he heard that he was nothing but a useless waste of space one more time, he would leave home forever, sick or not – at least, that was what he told himself. Momiji wasn't that brave in actuality, though.

Tohru tried to soothe him, to murmur those words that she had always had the knack of saying oh so perfectly. Yet, it didn't have as much of an effect as when they had first found love – and as the nausea turned to bile constantly lurking in his throat and the headaches turned to migraines which split his head apart by just a drop of rain upon glass, he became more and more ashamed to let her see him in such a sorry state.

"You'll be okay," she always told him soothingly when the pain wasn't as bad. She always said that, but each time, the conviction grew weaker and weaker. Before his very eyes, the girl he had fallen in love with, for her magical words and warmth, continued to mirror him; and just as he had become, she too turned frail and weak and unsure of herself and her place in the world.

The caretaker probably tried the hardest to convince him that nothing was wrong. It was as if there was a veil over her eyes, and she either couldn't see past it, or she simply refused to – no matter what he did, no matter how much he yelled or sobbed or retched or passed out almost drunkenly as his insomnia grew worse and worse only to let him fall into unconsciousness upon a whim, she never acknowledged it, instead holding onto the belief that the young master, the Rabbit (toy of a twisted _god)_ was the same, healthy young man he always had been.

And, for a while, he believed her.

But then, the illusions faded, and Momiji finally understood reality after Hatori walked in, furrowed brows and downward-set mouth seemingly permanently etched upon the older man's features. In his hands was a report – the results of the tedious set of examinations Momiji had been asked to go through upon his arrival to the facility, most presumably – and judging by the lack of any happiness in the man's expression, the news wasn't good.

He gulped, shifting uneasily upon the bed. He had never liked hospital checkup beds, he thought to himself absentmindedly while he watches the doctor drum his fingers rhythmically upon the clipboard. The way that the paper covering crinkled and crunched under his every move, the way the leather skin of the bed felt suffocating against his skin, made him uncomfortable, threatened. Adding his experience to all of the visits throughout the years to Rin, to Hatsuharu after his fights with Kyo, to the children of the Zodiac in general – he had never wanted to go back.

The man had already spoken by the time that Momiji pulled himself away from his wandering thoughts. A sharp gasp, followed by indignation from his father who sat on the chair to his right, was barely registered as the boy tried to remember what the man had said. What was the result? What was going on?

The elder Sohma understood his confusion and repeated it, and those five words were enough to send Momiji spiralling into that dark void off the cliff's ledge that made his stomach lurch and his head pound even more. Whether it was from fear, or from illness, he didn't know – but either way, he quickly emptied the contents of his stomach upon the cold, unfeeling tile floor in response, leaving the doctor to call nurses to clean the mess up and his father (_not his father, Momo's father, he didn't have parents_) to break down amidst the confusion.

_We don't know what's wrong. _

* * *

Days passed. The seasons changed from winter to spring, his high school graduation came and went. Much to no one's surprise, Momiji wasn't accepted into university like he had been anticipating just a year earlier. So, his friends came and left like the wind, leaving behind high school immaturities to immerse themselves in post-secondary life, and suddenly Momiji had no one to turn to.

At least she was a solid constant in his life. Like Momiji himself, Tohru's grades had fallen beyond repair quickly upon the birth of the 'illness', as the boy had now taken to calling it.

It wasn't like there was any name for it, anyway.

The headaches turned into body pains by the time two months after graduation had rolled around. The doctors gave him medicine for arthritis pain, for inflammation, for _everything _(he often joked humourlessly that he could probably run a pharmacy from within his own bathroom, to which she would simply grasp his hand and squeeze it with whatever strength she had left) but nothing seemed to do the trick. Either way, he was still sick, and no one knew why.

He felt like a guinea pig. Although he had consented to the research, to the testing, it felt like he was no longer Sohma Momiji – in fact, other than the tag with the code 110901 attached to his wrist every visit, he had no identification during the testing. He felt like nothing more than a lab rat as they administered this and that. It felt inhumane, and eventually, he began to wish that maybe it would have been better to never go to the hospital, to simply suffer sickness in the privacy of his own home.

The hospital gave him checkups every three weeks to see how the illness was progressing, and every time, they would take a sample of his blood. The young man was deemed not to be contagious, so he was allowed to continue living at home – however, with the amount of time spent in the sterile, menacing building increasing each visit, Momiji couldn't refrain from bitterly commenting about how it was more of a home than his household had ever been.

That made his caretaker weep, and his father regretful.

Akito cried. Cried and begged and pleaded and broke down into tears by his bedside ('_you're mine you stupid, stupid little rodent, _no one loves you but me, _why are you escaping-")_

Momiji didn't care.

* * *

It was amazing how quickly fear could twist the imagination. Whenever he attempted to fall into slumber's arms, the boy began seeing hallucinations of stiffness, of being confined to that one position of rest for the entirety of his life. The boy would wake up in a cold sweat, regretting ever sleeping in the first place. And at the times that Tohru was there, she would wordlessly hug him and smile and tell him that he'd be okay.

_You'll be okay – _those words had lost all of their meaning.

The nightmares were quickly dismissed, his father telling him he was simply making a mountain out of a molehill. Momiji couldn't tell if they were serious, or if they were simply saying it to make him feel better. Either way, he didn't think he wanted to know.

Momo had wanted to visit him. His father said no. His mother (not his mother anymore) said she shouldn't be visiting strange children, even other members of the family. Momo had cried, apparently, and although that would have lit a fire in his heart a year earlier, it was useless.

It wasn't every night that he tried to find sleep – for, every time he saw those visions, and Tohru _wasn't _there, he would call her to come and hold him. But she was too weak to come every day, and it wasn't fair to her.

The Sohma's didn't approve of her, seeing that she was as ill as he. That fact made him disgusted – the fact that his caretaker was only putting up with him because he was a Zodiac. Anyone else suffering in a similar position wasn't worth the time Momiji put into her, it seemed.

And then, the fear for her own health came back, and he'd be left shuddering and clinging to Tohru's body just a little tighter in his own trepidation. If he lost her, then he would truly be alone, even though he still had family, even though he still had a home – for she was the only one who could possibly understand the pain that he was going through.

She was everything he needed.

But soon, he began to feel guilty, because she wasn't the one who was sick. She was simply wasting away alongside him in her worry, not due to any inexplicable illness, and yet, she was suffering just as he was. It wasn't fair to watch her turn from that bright, beautiful, loving human being to someone who was chained by his side simply so that he wouldn't be alone anymore.

Guilt embedded its seed within him deeply when he realized that, her cold, gaunt body held tightly in his own arms. It was all his fault.

Maybe his mother had been right, all those years ago. Maybe he was useless after all.

* * *

The feeling first went away in his toes, he found. It was treated as a minute thing compared to the migraines and the joint pain and the sleeplessness. However, as his next appointment came around, and Hatori pointed out something that he hadn't even noticed – his smallest toe was jutting out at a strange angle upwards.

He was asked to move it. He couldn't. In fact, he couldn't move his toes at all. He couldn't feel them, nor could he feel the pain that should have been there at all times since his toe was undeniably broken by whatever force of nature.

So began the gradual degeneration of the body that was once Sohma Momiji.

Hatori said it was the slow onset of paralysis. Momiji said that it was hell come early.

Tohru didn't want to believe it when Momiji told her – paralysis was something that was read about on the news, something that they saw and pitied in other people, not something that was supposed to affect their lives personally. Yet, there he was, watching the doctor's lips move in seemingly slow motion (through his sunglasses, of course, since his intense migraines had forced him to become all but nocturnal) as he finally understood that his nerve endings were slowly breaking down.

Momiji didn't cry. He simply went to the practice, sat upon the carpeted floors and stared up at the bright lights with bare eyes despite the blinding lights that were reflecting every which way. Tohru sat by his side, gazing down upon him from her chair with worried eyes. He longed to reach out and smooth her creased brow, but he knew that those expressions of worry and sadness were perpetually etched upon both their faces, once so young and now so old from weariness.

The cast upon his little toe hindered him slightly when he tried to hold his violin up straight that day, despite the doctor's orders to rest for the following few days until lab results arrived. The fact that there was a cast small enough for that appendage made the boy crack an amused smile, the first sign of cheeriness to grace his face in months – but now that he was trying to perform, it was nothing but a bother. It threw him off balance, causing him to trip and his posture to slouch in such a manner that even his usually ill self could put to shame.

And she watched him move his bow with lips turned downwards, with eyes haggard and weary and empty. Because she remembered him when he had been beautiful, and she didn't understand how such a quiet, hardworking, graceful being could become something so frail, so rickety, so broken.

By the time he collapsed and an ambulance was called as he lay unmoving upon the cold floor of the studio, instrument's G string snapped and shoulder rest cracked, she was sure of it – the shortness of breath brought by performing would be an impossible euphoria for him to reach ever again.

* * *

Momiji didn't leave the hospital after that. Although he was given the liberty of movement through the wheelchair the hospital provided for him, he simply didn't have the willpower, now that his legs had become nothing more than useless flesh dangling from a rapidly numbing torso. Instead, he took residence in the corner of one room, ignoring the civil conversations between the other patients as days came in and out. Although everyone tried to get him to participate, to be engaged, he continued to act like nothing more than a doll.

His father stopped visiting him. Maybe he had given up. Maybe he couldn't bear to see his son (the one left behind) so lifeless. Either way, it didn't particularly affect Momiji – nothing mattered much anymore, anyway. It wasn't like he was going to be able to talk in a few months, if the degeneration continued on at that same rate.

Momo never came, nor did he ever hear her play the instrument he loved.

Tohru continued to visit him. She would always continue to visit him – however, as time passed, he stopped responding even to her. It was enough that he had taken away her opportunity for a better future, for happiness, by stringing her along in his sickness – he didn't want to have to feel guilty anymore, for that guilt that had begun to grow all those months ago had turned into a cesspool of dark shame that was slowly eating his heart away.

She never said much during those visits. No, she would barely utter a word. Instead, she simply graced him with her presence, with a hand holding his tightly and a look of peace within her weary eyes as she gazed out of his window. At times, she would simply prop her feet up on the edge of his bed and tilt her chair back, humming softly to fill the silence.

The other patients never said a word when she came to visit. Something about the tension, so finely hidden between exchanged looks and the flushing of a face, made the other patrons of the facility look away. It was as if looking upon the two young people was something forbidden, something their eyes should never see.

Yet, he never spoke to her. He never said a word about his shame, his sadness, the internal battle that he was constantly losing. All he did was remain unreceptive to even her sweetest words, her softest touch.

She put up with it for a while. But, naturally, she began to drift away.

He didn't know when it began to happen – maybe it was when his arms had begun to rest uselessly upon the bed, or maybe it was when it had become too difficult to lift his head from the pillow without physical aid. Was it when he had gotten the tube put into his nose, so that he could eat? Or was it when the bedpan was changed in front of her, and his face was supposed to flush crimson from the humiliation, but for some reason even that function had gone to the dogs?

But she was gone, and he was alone at last. Completely, utterly alone.

A full year passed since his graduation, and he watched the seasons change with unwavering eyes through his little window in the room. There was nothing else to do, not without violin, after all.

By the end of that winter, as the first blossoms of early spring began to fill the world with colour once more, she stopped coming altogether. Just as he stopped moving completely.

Akito came. "Just die, and let me chain another one. You've disgusted me long enough."

And then, at last, Momiji understood when it had all gone wrong. Laying upon that cold, unfeeling sterile white hospital bed, watching the nurses change his IVs and bedpans with nothing but pity and an artificial sympathy that they had learned while on the job, he understood why Tohru, along with everyone else, had left him behind.

* * *

His eyes could still move, and his ears could still hear, when the doctor told him that he wouldn't live much longer. If he could have laughed, he would have – it was a welcome prospect, to be out of the confines of icy flesh and bones and skin at last. He was anticipating it.

But then, Tohru came back. Her skin was rosy, her weight recovered in only a few months of disappearance from his eyes – she looked just like the girl he had met in his second year of middle school.

As she cried, however, when the doctors came and told her his situation, and as she begged for forgiveness for leaving him behind and for letting go of what they shared in order to fulfill her own selfish needs, his heart broke for the first time. And for the first time, something other than guilt was dominant in his heart.

Regret.

It was the first time she had ever cried in front of him.

He wished that he had opened his heart to her instead of becoming so aloof. He wished that he had done more to help her, that he had addressed her needs just as she had taken care of his own, instead of clinging to her and bringing her down with his flailing self. He wished that maybe, in fact, just maybe it would have been better if he hadn't even met her, and then maybe it wouldn't hurt so much to see her cry and to realize that he couldn't even be a man and wipe her tears away.

For, after all those years of having her as support, he finally realized that she had been the one who was truly alone. And he had never done anything to remedy that, to give her a shoulder and a helping hand and someone to cherish.

He had spent the passing days, months, _years_ mourning over his perpetual stillness. Suddenly, he couldn't help but wonder – how many tears had she shed for him while putting on that gentle smile? How long had she been scarred upon the inside, the blood filling her up until she suffocated upon it? More importantly, how could he have not seen it?

And as he closed his eyes and let his body drift through drug-induced slumber, he knew that wouldn't ever be able to wipe even a drop of those tears away.

The next morning, when rosy cheeks had dried, he didn't open up his eyes. And she didn't cry, she didn't mourn – she only held his hand tightly, saying goodbye to shackles she had grown to love, for the final time.


End file.
